The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Rome (Hist Atlas)

If you are already familiar with the broad outlines of Roman history and are looking for a visual reference to further your explorations, keep looking. This volume appears to be the outcome of an effort guided primarily by concern for today's short attention spans and budget limitations. The text is adequate enough as the briefest of introductions to its subject, but in fact this is an ATLAS, not a history per se, and its usefulness as such depends on the quality of its maps, which I found sadly disappointing. For one thing, there are surprisingly few maps in this volume. If you are interested in the growth of the city itself, if you hope to trace the movements of particular military campaigns, or if you seek a better understanding of trade routes, you will not find this volume helpful. Only the tired highlights (which can be found in any number of books) are covered. Furthermore, the maps are small--to the point of silliness--and the editors have in a number of instances alluded to events separated by a wide gulf of years on the same map. This renders even the few maps in the atlas muddled and is sure to confuse rather than inform neophytes, though these would seem to be the primary target audience. On the plus side, the book contains a number of interesting photographs, and the captions to these are surprisingly informative--the best thing about the book. All in all, a great disappointment and a surprising one as I remember Penguin's excellent pocketbook atlases of world history. Unfortunately, the narrowed focus of this Roman atlas was not matched by a corresponding increase in the quality of information offered.

This book permits to follow the history of Rome through colorful maps. Visual learner will find great advantage out of this approach. However, this is only an overview and does not add more than that compared to any other book of ancient Roman history. As a previous reviewer has noticed, the battle of Pharsalus was in Thessaly and not in Thrace as mistakenly placed by the author at page 32. Thrace is mainly in today Bulgaria, but overlaps also Turkey and Greece. Thessaly is in central Greece. However, to give Caesar what is Caesar's, another reviewer allegedly claimed to have discovered a mistake at page 16 related to the Temples of Castor and Pollux. In fact, the Penguin's text is correct: the temples were rebuilt by Tiberius (before he became emperor), under Augustus. Augustus adopted Tiberius, who later became Emperor. The practice of adopting would-be emperors was a pragmatic way to ensure a suitable persona for Rome, instead of a inept natural son.However, the book does not cover the Eastern Roman Empire (lasting for further more centuries) after the fall of the western part. Moreover, the author does not provide useful maps concerning the pressure from barbarians on the borders. Goths were Germanic tribes that moved from the Baltic sea to the Black sea, but this Atlas does not mention it. Why and where the pressure along the borders was mounting is not satisfactorily mentioned either. It is a shame for an historical atlas.

Excellent guide to the Roman era. We tend to think of the peak of Roman power (spreading as far as British Isles) and then the fall. This gives the full story. The rise of the empire was a tricky affair, as all the powers from the North and further East were there at the start. Celtic raids were common. Technology is illustrated in the fortifications and maps. None of the cultural or technological items are in the index. It lists people, places and events that we gave a name.Not being any more an expert in any historical era, this serves as a fine reference for this era or European history when I move on to read about other history of these areas. This book is of more use to me than atlases that cover earlier eras and regions outside this Mediterranean focus, but I do have one that covers prehistoric developments.

This was a pretty good little overview of ancient Rome. Understanding the history of Rome is a part of our Western heritage, and is quite important. I enjoyed the pics of the ancient buildings. This book is just a taste of Rome, but much more than one gets in a high school textbook. One negative is that it has pictures of naked statues, mainly male ones; be advised before sharing this book with children for that purpose.I think this book retails for $21, and sells for about $15. I bought a used copy through an Amazon seller, and paid much less. It really should be a $10 (new) book in my opinion.

This is quite good. I wish I had this in college during my four-year quest for my degree in history. Simple, concise and to the point without extraneous contemporary rewriting of history. (no BCE or CE or other PC gobbledygook to muddy the waters of learning). An excellent reference and a fine supplement to any library.

Got this for my son. He likes it very much.

This book has some interesting maps and charts but comes up short on meaningful information about historical events. Overall, it seems to be just another over-simplified 'Readers' Digest' account of a very dynamic and complicated time.

Useful when reading Grass Crown

This is bright and colourful but seriously lacking in actual cartographic information. There seem to be more pictures than maps and the mapping itself fails to provide even basic information about the location of places in the ancient Roman world. This book does not deserve the word 'Atlas' in its title.

A shortish book but very informative. Good maps and a great start point if you want to know more about the expansion of the Roman empire. If you read Roman historical fiction, this is very helpful.

Book arrived promptly, in the condition described. It is a set text for a university course, and I am very grateful to have found it at such a competitive price!

When ever I read historical novels I try to imagine where these ancient Roman provinces were places, well this book showed me in good detail that I could understand. This book will be kept for a long time and used as a reference for future use. The delivery time was also very prompt.

The book takes one through the history of the Roman Empire in a series of short chapters summarising the main events. It is extremely well written and the author is clearly an expert in his field. The maps supplement the text in in a very helpful way and the photographs have also been very carefully selected to complement the text. Altogether an extremely engaging reference book which I shall definitely use a lot since it provides such excellent summaries of the centuries and subjects it covers.